


Payment for Charon

by Destina



Category: Stargate SG-1
Genre: F/M, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2003-10-01
Updated: 2003-10-01
Packaged: 2018-04-03 23:25:15
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,714
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4118547
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Destina/pseuds/Destina
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Some things are worth the price paid to have them.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Payment for Charon

**Author's Note:**

> Originally posted to website and mailing lists in October 2003. Posted to AO3 in June 2015.

Daniel's hands shook when he reached for the laces of his boots. He stopped, blinked, and tried again, but the laces slipped through his fingers. 

Jack's hands covered Daniel's. "Easy," he said, as he knelt in front of Daniel. 

"I've been tying my own shoes since I was three," Daniel said, an obvious, impatient truth.

Jack took the laces and pushed Daniel's hands away. "So take a break." Jack laced the boots and tied simple, efficient knots to secure them. Daniel rested his shaking hands on his thighs; they trembled there against the Abydonian robes. After a moment, Jack's hands covered Daniel's again, out in the open, and Jack asked, "Is everything ready?"

"All the preparations have been made," Daniel said quietly. "Kasuf is bringing her himself."

Outside, the wind howled, whipping the heavy flaps of the tent into a frenzied dance, scoured by sand and heat. "Not the best weather for this," Jack observed. 

"It's perfect," Daniel said, too sharply. Jack's fingers curled around Daniel's, loosely holding him there, anchoring him against the wind. "It's fitting." He reached down and picked up Jack's uniform hat. "But I don't know how you're going to keep this thing on your head."

"Years of practice," Jack said. 

"You didn't have to wear your uniform," Daniel said. He held the cap out to Jack, who set it straight and formal, with the brim just above his eyes. "I'm sure Kasuf appreciates the gesture, but..." He stopped; Jack watched him flounder for words to make himself clear. Finally, he said, "It won't matter to Sha're."

"It matters to me," Jack said. "And to Carter, and Hammond."

"I know." Daniel adjusted the robes around his body. They seemed heavier than Jack remembered. 

"Ready?" Jack rose from the ground and tugged his jacket into place. 

Daniel looked up at him. "No."

"Come on." Jack stepped aside and lifted the tent flap, and together they went out into the passing storm. 

*****

Jack still hadn't confessed to walking around Daniel's apartment, touching his things. Or listening to Carter read aloud from a journal in which Jack's name was prominently featured on every open page. If he'd started to explain, he might have had to confess how he'd thought about taking the journals with him and reading them all, to know Daniel, to understand what his journey had been like - to get closer to him, any way he could. And then he would've had to confess how much he hadn't wanted to know, because knowing would mean he had to stop worrying about what Daniel would think when he came back. He needed to believe Daniel wasn't dead. Needed it, like air, or water; a determined belief. Alive. Coming back. 

Instead of confessing his sins, Jack touched Daniel. Negotiating without talking while they tumbled across the bed, those first tentative motions of fingertips against bare skin. This was the first time, reality without waking, and Jack knew he wasn't prepared for the aftermath. But that was yet to come, and this was now, so he wasn't in a hurry to find out what was over the bridge. 

They would do this again, Jack thought; again and again, unending. Or maybe they'd never do it again. Just because it had happened once didn't mean anything had changed. The emotion had been too much to overcome this time. Too much chance of losing each other. Too much chance of becoming nothing, of belonging only to memory. 

"Did you really say nice things about me in your eulogy?" Daniel asked. Sated and sprawled across a messy bed, arms stretched out to the side in subtle invitation, he provided almost enough of a distraction to make the question tolerable for Jack.

Almost - but not quite. There were a few things in the world Jack refused to dwell on, and his eulogy for Daniel fell squarely into that category. He didn't plan to revisit those feelings anytime soon. Not even to please Daniel. "Why don't you ask Carter?" 

"I did. She said I should ask you." 

Jack stretched out beside Daniel on the bed - Jack's bed, the one he'd kept preserved like an artifact since Sara last graced it. Daniel's eyes were earnest, seeking affirmation of everything they were going to do, everything they had already done. "I said nice things," Jack admitted. 

Daniel leaned up to nuzzle the side of Jack's face. Shivers of desire, out of Jack's control, followed each breath against his skin. "Like what?"

"Not now." So many other things Jack could do with his mouth; talking made those things harder. He reached a hand up and pushed the hair out of Daniel's face. He'd already learned he could kiss Daniel into silence, into submission, even into a state of breathless climax, but he wanted more. 

He wanted the breach of his own body, the simple act of separation of what had come before, and what would come after, by this act of taking. He needed to feel Daniel stretched over him, in him, and the rhythm of Daniel's heart, fused with his own. 

Daniel's skin was sea-salty and the scratch of sand was still in his hair. It showered out when Jack ran his fingers through it, a mist of stinging rain. He hadn't waited for Daniel to remove the remnants of the sand from his body. He'd only pushed him--once, twice, three times, with an open hand, a palm against Daniel's chest--through the door of the bedroom, back to the bed, flat against the pillows. Simple commands. Non-verbal. Direct. 

Daniel had pushed back with words. Phrases--once, twice, three times--"What are-" and "Jack?" and then, more softly, while Jack looked into his eyes and stripped him of his clothes: "Be sure about this."

Jack was sure. Fire, loss, separation, death, rebirth. Agony of uncertainty had made him sure. 

After, Jack could tell Daniel wanted to speak, to let loose of all the whys. Which was how they'd come back to death and pain. How they always came back to it, somehow. There had been a year of wanting, leading to something neither of them should permit himself to have, and still they arrived back at death, in the end, even as they turned to each other. 

Jack wanted very much to change that, from now on. 

*****

They trudged through the violent wind side by side. Jack slipped the sunglasses on his face a fraction of a second before Daniel drew out his own. The planet's characteristic sunshine was absent today, dwarfed by the waning sandstorm, but the sand irritated the eyes of anyone foolish enough not to shield against it. 

"There are a few boxes in the living room," Jack said. "I'll pick those up over the weekend."

"No hurry," Daniel said. His step faltered in the thick, deep sand; Jack steadied him, but Daniel pulled away, self-sufficient in this desert land. "I think I'll be here a few more days." He glanced sideways at Jack. "There's still a few things at your house. I didn't...I haven't had a chance to..."

"Whenever," Jack said. 

*****

Sometimes, Daniel sat in the living room and read to Jack from books strewn across the coffee table. Fables and fairy tales - fractured, Daniel-style, into parables of the day, a modern-times Aesop with his bare feet on Jack's table and a day's growth of red-gold beard faint on his face. Jack liked the feel of the words against his ears, and he liked the taste of Daniel's surprise when he kissed those words to a halt. He even appreciated the rough rasp of whiskers against his hand, a good burn, when he turned Daniel's face and took his mouth. 

"If you had looked at the tablet I showed you - no, Jack, I mean, if you had really looked at it - you would have noticed a pattern," Daniel said. Every phrase Daniel uttered in relation to his work was tangential, heading off from a main branch into subsets of minutia. Artifacts, history, mythology, culture, records, language, translation. Jack was happy when he could make that stream stop flowing, or make it flow in opposite directions: language pulling in, wrenched back hard into the place where breath came from Daniel's throat, the place where words stopped and sounds came forth. Inarticulate, unthinking, wholly clear sounds, all for Jack. 

"What kind of pattern?" he asked, not because he wanted to know, but because Daniel wanted him to know.

"A progression of a story. Greek, I think. The god depicted reminds me of Hermes, and there are references to bringing down the dead. It's possible the caverns we found are a sacred place, a place where the dead embark on a journey. Like the entrance to the underworld. That sort of thing." Daniel was turning a coin over between his fingers. "That explains the coins I found, too. Payment for Charon."

Images floated free-form through Jack's mind, something remembered from literature, from pop culture, from a story Jack had heard once. "The origin of modern toll roads?" he guessed, wildly and purposely inaccurate, and Daniel tossed him the coin. 

"You should hang on to that," he said, pointing to the warm metal in Jack's hands. "You might need it someday." 

"So what you're saying is, I'm going to hell."

Daniel's smile quirked up half, then whole, spreading across his face like a riptide ready to sweep all doubts away. "You'd know better than I would about that."

"Yeah, well, let me tell you something. I've been to hell. Not planning on going back anytime soon. There are no bony-assed ferrymen in my future."

"That's good to know." Laughter punctuated the words, but Daniel was looking at him as though it was Jack's turn to tell him a fable. 

Jack wanted Daniel to know each hell, private and public, real and imagined. He thought Daniel could probably see them in his eyes, if he looked closely enough. A pattern; a progression of a story. 

He climbed over Daniel and straddled his legs, then deposited the coin in his shirt pocket. "How far will this get me?" he asked, speaking into a kiss while he jerked open the buttons of Daniel's shirt.

The book toppled sideways, because Daniel was hard, and hungry for him. Always hungry, always ready for him. Daniel's mouth tasted of desire.

***

They weren't far from the temple, now; the pyramid's gleaming tip rose above the dunes, drawing them like a beacon. Nearby were the tents and the assembled personnel. Everyone was waiting for them. 

Daniel squatted down in the sand, hunkered down, like a soldier digging in to a fortified position. Jack knelt beside him. 

"I don't know how to do this," Daniel said. The words came out flat, devoid of their underlying desperation. 

Jack pushed the hood back from Daniel's face so he could see better, but Daniel wouldn't look at him. He cupped the back of Daniel's neck with his hand and waited. After a time, he raised his arm and wrapped it around Daniel's shoulders, and rode out Daniel's soundless, dry sobs. 

***

Daniel brought a toothbrush to Jack's house, ignoring the one in the package Jack had not-so-subtly laid on the left side of the bathroom counter. Then some socks had appeared, balled up in neat curves and squeezed into the tiniest corner of the top dresser drawer. For a while, socks and a toothbrush were the placeholders, and for six months, nothing else migrated into the house. 

In that time, there were some signs of occupation at Daniel's place, too. Books, mostly. Jack once thought it would have been the other way around, but then he realized he'd brought to the situation the things he associated with Daniel. Along with a toothbrush, and a razor, and a hockey stick.

He wondered sometimes if socks were the thing Daniel most closely associated with Jack, in some sort of warped way. He thought about asking Daniel, but wouldn't have known how to phrase the question. It was all right, though, because some shirts appeared one evening, and a couple of pads of paper and some pens. Always pushed far to the side, not taking up any room in an overt sort of way.

Jack understood why, because he'd always known the reason. There was another world, another life, inside the places Jack and Daniel shared together. Daniel built a sheltered space inside his heart, a world inhabited by Sha're. Jack shared Daniel with her echo, and Daniel didn't want to make a sound that might change the course of the future. When Jack thought of it, a fierce ache spread through his body, tightening his throat and making him push thoughts of future aside. 

Sometimes, he looked into Daniel's eyes and saw it there: a pattern, a progression of a story. Not his story, though. Not theirs. It was written in stone before it ever began, like a prophecy. Eulogy to eulogy, they'd wandered through darkness, creating a path for one another. Theirs was a fragile world, full of invisible artifacts of the past, and subject to collapse. 

***

They waited in the dust of Kasuf's forefathers. Jack stood by Daniel much as he might have at his wedding, if he'd known how to be that man, so long ago. When the time came, he backed away and left Daniel to stand alone. This was how it had to be done; it was what was required of them. 

"Almost time," said Daniel. He pulled the hood back up. Carter, Hammond and Fraiser were milling around near the villagers. Jack felt strange without a weapon in his hands. He could have been of some use, in that way, when he was useless in every other. 

Daniel pulled off his sunglasses and rubbed his eyes, then gave Jack a worn, joyless smile. His gaze seemed to cut straight down to Jack's core, past the uniform, past grief, past all sorts of pointless walls and masks designed to get them through this day. The unbearable awkwardness gave way to quiet acceptance while they looked steadily at one another. 

Daniel put his sunglasses back on. 

***

"It's too good to be true," Daniel whispered once, so far into the twilight of sleep that his heartbeat was even, steady, slow. "Too good."

Jack kissed Daniel's closed eyes and didn't speak. Not even when Daniel stirred, or when he curled into Jack's arms, abandoning the shelter of his heart for one more real, more true. 

Only when Daniel slept could Jack sleep. He discovered it as an accident, a strange convergence of need. His dreams were restless, aware, emerging only when they were together. He wasn't prone to daydreams. They were a waste of moments he could be living his life, avoiding a later regret. At night, when Daniel slept soundly, he sometimes gave in to the sway of dreams. It was easier then, when he wasn't so aware. 

There were also nights Jack prowled the house, on edge because he wasn't alone. He wasn't accustomed to being with someone else. He could barely believe he was sharing space with someone he'd invited in. 

Jack wasn't sure he ought to get used to it. 

***

Jack stood across from Daniel, quiet, as the wind gentled the sky and raised the blue in its glory. The world was changing all around them, and no one had given them a warning. 

"Dr. Jackson," someone said, and then Kasuf was there, with Sha're. Her eyes were as dark as Jack remembered; her skin as smooth. The only sign of her ordeal was the shadows beneath her eyes, dark circles to mirror the pain her heart had endured. 

"Daniel," she said. One joyful word, the fracturing blow to all things true in Jack's keeping. She left her father's side, free of all obligations, free of slavery and death and all things that had separated her from Daniel, and threw her arms around her husband. 

Daniel embraced her fiercely, with almost as much passion as he might have years ago, before he had started to believe he could not save her. Daniel closed his eyes; Jack supposed it was so he could see things more clearly. 

Jack turned his face to the desert. The sunlight on sand was golden and warm, and carried all the colors of mourning.

**Author's Note:**

> This AU is a twist on events from Fire and Water and Forever in a Day. Part of me believes that Jack and Daniel could never have taken this step until after Daniel knew Sha're was dead...but when I started asking 'what if?' questions, this scenario seemed to leap out at me. It's a departure from what I normally write, I suppose, but it was interesting to explore.


End file.
